Eduardo Franco

Eduardo L. Franco, BSc, MPH, DrPH, PhD (Hon), OC, FRSC, FCAHS

Dr. Franco is James McGill Professor in the Departments of Oncology and Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Director, Division of Cancer Epidemiology, and Chairman, Department of Oncology, at McGill University's Faculty of Medicine, in Montreal, Canada. He was a faculty member at the Université du Québec (1989-94) and Senior Researcher and Head of the Epidemiology Unit, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Sao Paulo, Brazil (1985-89).

He holds BSc (1975) and Licentiate (1976) degrees in biology from Universidade de Campinas, Brazil, and master's (MPH) and doctoral (DrPH) degrees in public health microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1981-84). He was a Guest Researcher at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta (1980-81 and 1983-84), and a post-doctoral fellow in cancer epidemiology during 1984 at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, and at Louisiana State University, in New Orleans.

Professor Franco's research during the last 33 years has focussed on the following topics: molecular epidemiology and prevention of cervical cancer and human papillomavirus-associated diseases, cancers of the upper aero-digestive tract, prostate, endometrium, and childhood tumours; studies of epidemiologic methods for evaluating efficacy of cancer screening strategies; the impact of measurement error in epidemiology; and studies of societal and clinical influences on cancer patient survival. Much of his research has been international, with collaborative projects in Canada, Brazil, Mexico, the Congo Republic, United States, and with the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in France.

His research has been funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the US National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute of Canada, and Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec (FRSQ). As of mid-October 2018, he had published 474 scientific articles (h index: Scopus=77; Google Scholar=90) and 61 chapters, edited two books on cancer epidemiology and prevention, and co-edited 10 journal supplement issues. Many of his articles have appeared in premier biomedical journals, such as The Lancet, Journal of the American Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, British Medical Journal, and PLOS Medicine. He made 714 presentations as invited speaker or session chair in national and international conferences and in seminars in academic or clinical departments throughout the world (excluding 509 offered abstracts presented in conferences).

He is the Editor-in-Chief of Preventive Medicine (2013-) and Preventive Medicine Reports (2014-). He has served in the editorial boards of American Journal of Epidemiology (1993-98), Cancer Detection and Prevention (2001-08), Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention (1995-), eLife (2012-, Senior Editor from 2018), Epidemiology (1993-2009), International Journal of Cancer (2009-), Medical and Pediatric Oncology (2000-04), Papillomavirus Research (2015-), PLoS-Medicine (2004-17), Preventive Medicine (2008-12), among other biomedical journals. He has served in several scientific or grant review panels for the above agencies and for national and international health organizations, as well as a consultant to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector on cancer screening and prevention. He served twice as an advisor to the US President’s Cancer Panel (2012, 2013).

He has mentored 82 graduate students (48 MSc, 34 PhD), 35 post-doctoral fellows, and 30 undergraduate trainees since 1985. In addition to his regular teaching at McGill, he has taught 45 courses on cancer epidemiology and best practices in scientific publishing in the US, Latin America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. He has served as member of and occasionally chaired organizing or program committees for 57 national and international conferences on epidemiology, infectious diseases, and oncology themes. He chaired the organizing committee for the 16th World Congress of Epidemiology, in Montreal in August 2002 and was Honorary President for the EUROGIN Congress, Monaco, February 2010. He was elected twice (2002-05 and 2017-20) as representative for North America in the Council of the International Epidemiological Association. He represented the latter in the Joint Policy Committee of the Societies of Epidemiology (2011-15).